Doctor Who: Which character will die in episode 1?

Doctor Who showrunner
Steven Moffat has revealed that one of the show’s four main characters will die in the ‘heart-wrenching’ first episode of
the new series – raising the prospect that the Doctor himself could be killed.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory come up against possessed astronauts in series opener – and somebody’s going to die… (Picture: BBC)

Moffat said series opener The Impossible Astronaut will feature the death of either the Doctor – played by Matt Smith – his assistant Amy Pond ( Karen Gillan ), her husband Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) or River Song ( Alex Kingston ).

He told Doctor Who Magazine: ‘The Doctor’s darkest hour is coming. Shows like Doctor Who should have big, colourful, memorable moments that make you go, “What the hell?” Well, this is one of them.

‘When I came up with this incredible, heart-wrenching twist, I thought, “We kill off one of the leads in the season opener. Who’s going to stop watching at that point?” It lures you in.’

Fans will see the foursome come up against possessed astronauts and alien enemies The Silents in the first episode, which is set in 1960s America and will feature the Time Lord meeting President Richard Nixon .

The monsters have been described as one of the ‘scariest’ villains in the BBC sci-fi show’s history.

The comments from Moffat, the show’s executive producer and head writer, are sure to spark a frenzy of speculation among the show’s fans as to which character might die.

It’s made even more confusing by the fact that the recent trailer for the series seems to show at least three of the main characters – The Doctor, Amy and Rory – appearing in subsequent episodes. That would leave River Song (seen kissing the Doctor in the trailer) as the only possible candidate… except she can’t die, because we’ve already seen her die (later in her own timeline) during her first appearance on the show, the Moffat-penned Forest Of The Dead.

The answer may lie in speculation that the opening episode will feature two different versions of The Doctor – making it possible that the series’ title character will actually be killed.

Death, of course, isn’t always permanent in Doctor Who – Rory was ‘killed’ and deleted from history in the last series when a Silurian warrior shot him, but he returned in the series’ two-part finale.

The new series of Doctor Who begins on April 23. The series has been split in two to allow for a ‘huge’ plot twist in the seventh episode , which will act as a cliffhanger until the series returns for its second set of episodes in the autumn. That plot twist has also been rumoured to centre around the death of one of The Doctor’s companions.